


Cats and Crows

by MacaroniSwirls



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, meow meow purr purr caw caw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-20
Updated: 2012-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:58:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MacaroniSwirls/pseuds/MacaroniSwirls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaspers happens upon an injured bird. They talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cats and Crows

**Author's Note:**

> I really love the sprites and I love Davesprite and also Jaspersprite a lot. There isn't enough written of them so here ya go!

Dying as a sprite is much different from dying as a human, you realize. All the sprite bits that make you up tend to get mixed up, and you can’t really keep a grasp on you are, or used to be or what you will be. Probably dead, since you have one wing ripped off and a wound bleeding glowing gold and it’s enough effort to move, let alone live.

Who even are you? The memories keep on getting jumbled up, the information is in all the wrong drawers, and you open them up and you never pick up the right thing.

You are Dave Strider, you think, but he wasn’t feathery, and another big tells you that you are a crow, flying around the edge of a muddy apartment, and another part says you have no name, you are just in the middle of a crater and a man is looking down at you. The more you bleed, the more it gets jumbled up.

The best thing, you think, is to focus on the present, focus hard and maybe you can tell if you are human or sprite or living or dying and maybe if you’re lucky, get the last vestiges of your scrambled memories straight.

“Open your eyes!”

Scrunch up, yes, that’s right, ignore whatever it is that’s prodding you. Close your eyes, and try to remember – try to fool your last living moments into thinking that you’re still Dave Strider. You’re Dave Strider, and you’re hanging out in your room, making rad beats, pestering your friends. Every day you wake up, and everything is normal. You can just go downstairs, endure whatever neglect your Bro has for you that day. You aren’t sure if it’s real, but you pretend it is, trick the decaying particles of memory into presenting itself as the present.

“Meow! Rise and shine!!! Cat naps are good but you’ve been sleeping for hours and there are things to get doing!!!” Something very tentacle like prods you. You ignore whatever unfortunate implications this might have.

Lay down. Pretend that this is the end of the line for you.

“Purr purr us sprites have things to do!!!”

Okay, now you can just feel the multiple exclamations marks stabbing at your wellbeing. It digs its way into your memories, bringing out the bits and pieces you don’t want to remember. Yes, you’re a sprite now, you just got you ass whooped, you can barely move, and-

You realize that you only have one wing now. This is quite bothersome. Sitting up is worse – even an attempt brings hurt and tremors through your entire torso. Little bolts of lightning bursting their way through your weird sprite body. You attempt to stretch yourself into the general direction of up.

Your companion notices. Your companion with the big cat face and the octopus tentacles and the idiot harlequin suit, and you decide that no sprite goes through prototyping looking halfway decent, but you try to ignore what this implies about your own appearance.

“Good! You’re up!!! Meow meow lets go!”

“Rrrrgh.”

Pain for a sprite doesn’t hurt the same. Well, it hurts, but when it hurts, it’s different – dislocations of what, coding? And you can’t think straight, the script that the game runs you on is glitching, and you go to one thought and just end up in another, and it’d be so much easier to just lay down, but there’s this stupid thing bothering you. You opened your eyes, and it’s another sprite, some cat harlequin, and it’s really the last thing you want to deal with right now.

“You need to lick yourself clean quick before time runs out!!!”

“Nope. Do I look in any position to get up?”

“Things with feathers are always in a position to get up!!! Unless I’ve pounced on them but you were pounced on by a dog and those aren’t nearly as good at clawing!!”

You whir through your mind, trying to find logical pieces to connect. There’s cat. What about cats…a part of you, the crow part that isn’t you, wants to flap away and panic a bit, but you suppress the urge, just barely. You Bro talked a bit about getting one of the smancier kinds, once, in an attempt to impress some girl, and it’s so hard to focus, everything is so scrambled. You think, you rake your mind, and then

“You’re…Rose’s cat, aren’t you? The one that used to play psychotherapy games with her a lot.”

“Rose did ask me to help her a lot!!! She would stuff me into a stuffy little suit and I would talk to her and help her with her problems!! I don’t think it was really me helping, though, all I really did was meow! Maybe she helped herself and I helped her help herself, like how a human helps a cat helps a flea!”

“What did you just even try to convey?”

“That Rose was my master and I helped her and I always felt so light around her and even when I was in the river I think I thought of her to stay light and float even if that didn’t work out so well!!! I don’t think I was very smart as a cat but I think I’m smarter now!”

“Here I was, thinking you have something important to tell me. Looks like I was wrong, and now I just have a cat yowling along to my last requiem. What’s your name, again? I need to think up a good title for this.”

“Jaspers!”

“Jasper’s Requiem. Sounds eerie enough, Rose would be proud. Now go sing it to her and tell her it’s the last dying gift of Dave. Or Davesprite. Whatever. ”

“I can’t! She is much too growley and mopey and like a jungle cat prowling through my mind! That’s how much I’m worrying about her.”

“What?”

“I saw her flying ahead and she was like the lines created by those dots in the sky and she seemed really predatory and it was worrying and I tried to catch up with her and she was gone and I can’t go too far I’m just a sprite and it made me feel shoved under a carpet like dustballs I used to capture!”

The cat’s smile looks down at you, or at least the general shape of its face makes it look like a smile. For all you know, he’s actually frowning in some weird cat language. Like Cal. Of course that would be the next mismatched memory to pop up, Cal with his weird tendency to always have that creepy smile on his face even if he seemed mad or disappointed or just Cal.

“It’s easy enough to feel like that. Our job is pretty much just to handle the background stuff and let the main guys take over.”

“Okay!”

Jaspers – or is it Jaspersprite? Less than a moment of thought lets you settle on the name Jaspers. The cat is unperturbed at this.

“So are you just going to sit here and lick yourself? You don’t seem too busy.”

“I’m very busy!!! My job is to help another little girl that my Rose introduced me to! It’s very fun to talk to her and she says I remind her of her lusus whatever that is! She’s sweet and green and like catnip and it is pretty great like purring in the sun in the middle of the day!”

“You’re pretty mopey for a cat.”

“You’re pretty lazy for a human!!!”

“Aren’t cats the one who sleep for twenty hours a day or something?”

“Only sometimes!!! However, we need to do things, and get things done, and help them win this game! Then maybe we can go back to home and purr in a happy cat nap purr purr.”

“Sure.”

The cat pauses, and it takes you a moment to realize he is lost in thought. His tentacles are twiddling together and he’s got a thoughtful purr motoring through him.  
“I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to go look for Rose! I purrfur to think that it’s not too late for her.”

Jaspers leaves with that pun, and you once again try to get your thoughts in order.

For a second, you are Dave from a few years ago, and the next you’re a crow, and then you’re Dave from a different session, and then you’re Davesprite, and it’s something hard to swallow, but you force it down your throat regardless.

As the cat leaves, you lift yourself up and start the work of healing your wounds. Your Bro is lying next to you, and there’s still a puddle of your blood on the floor, but you figure it’s probably best to just ignore that for now.

-_-_-

It’s on the battlefield that you find her, and she is crying and familiar and she is another sprite, and she looks up at you so hopefully as you appear within her view.

A sprite’s job is never done.


End file.
